HUMILIATION AND GREEK DEBT (original) (raw)

This article, the basis of a talk to the Hellenic Political Science Association in March 2012, appeared in Greek Political Science Review, 39, 127-49, 2012. It presents an approach to the analysis of humiliation or forced social displacement. It makes reference to the particular example of Greece during the sovereign debt crisis and offers a comparison with the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. Distinctions are made between yielding responses and challenging responses to humiliation, including escape and acceptance in the first category, and resistance-rejection, revenge-rejection and conciliation-reform in the latter category. This article, given in Athens at the height the Greek debt crisis, is a way station between my analysis in Globalization: The Hidden Agenda (Polity 2006) and Civilized Rebels (Routledge 2018). The visible signs of anger and destruction in Athens made a telling contrast with the strength and dignity of the deeply hospitable Greek citizens that I met there.